Some woman's journals discovered from this time period tell of their exploits with doctors, interns and other available men. The jest of the mailman and milkman delivering more than mail and milk are very well rooted in fact. It is interesting that a whole society developed around wives having sex with other men while denying their husbands who had to remain faithful to them. It is not uncommon to find entries in a wife's journal such as "I had a wondrous day today. After a most satisfying visit, for both myself and Doctor Elbridge's young intern, I spent a delightfully entertaining evening raising my poor husband's lustiness near to its pinnacle during this time that he must abstain from loosing semen. His antics were most amusing and raised my own lust. As always, he proved his devotion to me by pleasuring me in a most deliciously French way.( Mine will be the most scrumptiously naughty story of any lady tomorrow at tea)
Another journal tells how excited one wife was that she had her husband doing housework, an unheard of practice at a time when male and female roles were so rigid, illustrating again how arousal and denial of sex can totally alter a man's behavior. Other journal entries tell of the rise in attention from their husbands and the thrill of sneaking around behind their husband's back and having sex while their husband was "locked in his cage."
While diagnosing the damage done to women by denying them the fulfillment of their sexual needs may have been falsely labeled hysteria, the doctors of Victorian times were startlingly near the mark. Victorian doctors had insightfully identified the need women had for sex with a variety of men.
Unsurprisingly, since human societal structures were originally matriarchal, societies that still live today in ways closer to our original female and male roles do not suffer from the damages of psychological and physiological stress. These more basic societies, far from the modern world, are nearly always matriarchal. It is the women in these societies who control property, family affairs and sexual activity. These women will usually have multiple husbands and lovers. One or two of these men provide them with food, shelter and security, while the others provide them with sex. Male, female, male couplings are not only accepted, but quite normal. In some societies, certain "stud" males will exclusively service a wife, in others, wives will share, exchange and even trade stud males. Men in these societies are happy in their subordinate roles to women. While there are some incidents of jealousy, there is no violence, crime, or sexual perversion. Men are focused on pleasing their wives instead of impressing other women in the group or competing with other men, except in the area of being good sex providers. Wives will keep this competition light and fun and ongoing. Men focused on this kind of competition do not compete with each other in other ways either, leading to much stronger male/male friendships and cooperation.
An unlikely place further confirmation of the appropriateness of cuckolding in human bonding relationships was discovered in the findings of primate studies. In one study, researchers found two anatomical influencers of fidelity in primates. One was the physical size difference between the sexes. The other was the male's ratio of penis size to body ma*s.
It was found that in those species of primates where the female was considerably larger than the male, the female would have many sexual partners and bond with none. As female/ male size became closer, the female would bond with one male. This male would remain faithful to her, but she would continue to have sex with non-bonded males. It was found that this was not reversed until the male became extremely larger than the female.
The second influencer the researchers discovered was the ratio of penis size to body ma*s. In species where the difference in physical size between the sexes was slight, (as it is in humans) the penis to body size ratio increased female dominated sexual behavior. The smaller the penis to body size, the more bonded males were restricted to activity with only their mate while females would engage in sexual activity with a variety of non-bonded males. Within these groups, females would generally bond with males with smaller penises and engage in sexual activity with better-endowed, non-bonded males. The most common activity between females and their mates was grooming and eating, with the far greater amount of sexual activity occurring between mated females and males other than their mates. Neither mated nor non-mated females would engage in sexual activity with bonded males who were not their own mates. The most frequent sexual activity of bonded males was masturbation.
This study particularly intrigued me because it's findings correlated so closely with my own experiences. I have a*sisted many couples in beginning and maintaining cuckold relationships. Among my patients, husbands with smaller penises were not only more agreeable to being cuckolded, but would even sometimes suggest it. These very enlightened, lesser-endowed, husbands were keenly aware of their inability to satisfy their wives sexually. By accepting their wives engaging in sex with other men they were relieved of the pressure to perform.
It makes sense that this behavior would be present in humans since humans are primates whose difference in size between the sexes is slight and men's penises are very small when compared to their body ma*s. Also interesting is that women, like other primate females, will rarely engage in sex with married men. A husband's wedding band makes for a fairly efficient chastity device. A wife's wedding band, however, does little and sometimes even encourages pursuit by men. This further illustrates that the innate human proclivity for cuckold relationships goes genetically even deeper.
Our modern morals and the female/male roles imposed on us by society are not only aberrant behavior given our genetic make up, but psychologically unhealthy and morally unethical. It is unfair that a woman is forced to repress the powerful sex drives that are so genetically imbedded in her psyche. Most married woman simply can't do it. It is uncountable today how many wives are having sex with other men behind their husband's back because our society cannot accept a woman's natural needs.
At what point did we move from a matriarchal to a patriarchal society that perverted our male and female sexual roles? We have so inverted out ideas of human sexuality that we have come to believe that women have a lower sex drive than men when the reverse is true. We think that men should be free to have sex unbridled, when it is women who should be freed and men bridled. We have created a society in which women struggle with guilt and frustration over their natural sexual needs while men are obsessed with perverted sexual deviations from far too great an access to far to great a variety of sexual stimuli and freedom.
Just as our modern lives preventing us from responding to our need to express our flight or fight response leads to stress, and our turning from whole foods to processed foods give us all sorts of physical ailments, our denial of our natural sexual programming leads to untold emotional and behavioral problems. It would startle the average person to learn how many divorces are caused by the inequity of a woman's unfulfilled sexual needs. In an effort to protect the man from humiliation it is rarely mentioned in polite society that the reason for a couple's divorce was because the wife was finding sexual satisfaction outside their marriage. If we could be open and honest about a women's needs, and that it is not the fault of their husbands that they need to fulfill those needs outside their marriages, then maybe we could begin to embrace cuckoldry as a healthy societal norm and save far more marriages.
I have saved many marriages in my practice by gently introducing the idea and practice of cuckoldry to struggling couples. I have seen in my own female patients that once they start to engage in sex outside their marriage with the acceptance of their husbands and the security that their husbands will remain faithful, they become more centered, calm and confident. Similarly, once their husbands get past their jealous feelings and fear of inadequacy they become calmer and more mature, no longer engaging in childish behavior like nights out with the boys or an obsession with sports. They even loose their interest in pornography as their wives recounting of their extramarital exploits, or their participation in those exploits, becomes much more titillating to them than the artificial titillation of pornography.
When my female clients add the uncertainty principle of arousal and denial to their cuckold marriage a woman can bring her husband back to the days when they were first dating. Husbands become more focused on their wives and no longer suffer the frustrating feelings caused by a desire for unattainable women
Cuckold marriages can evolve into a great variety of preferences. In my own practice I have seen cuckold marriages that range from those in which cuckolding wives enjoy subjecting their husband's to humiliation and punishment, to those in which wives will have sex with other men in front of her husband as a form of entertaining them, to just about everything in between. Most couples in my practice, however, have very loving marriages with playful arousal and denial that seem conventional in every way except that the wife dates while her husband remains faithfully hers.
It is regretful that the cuckold relationships of Victorian times could not have evolved into an open way of life accepted by modern society. It is my hope that one day it will.
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